Inside the Cartel Party: Party Organisation in Government and Opposition

Abstract

This article assesses the internal dynamics of the cartel party model. It argues that a party's endeavour to increase its societal reach by opening membership boundaries while keeping candidate selection local (two tendencies ascribed to this model), and the general need to maintain party unity, are difficult to reconcile. Therefore a fully fledged cartel party is organisationally vulnerable, which reinforces its resort to selective benefits (i.e. political appointments, patronage) whenever in government to satisfy organisational demands, a trigger intensifying party–state relations which is usually overlooked. Further, the dominant view of the ascendancy of parties' ‘public face’ needs to be qualified: the Irish Fianna Fáil, with its permeable boundaries and local candidate selection, reflects the cartel party model without a cartel at the party system level. Majoritarian dynamics have forced Fianna Fáil repeatedly into opposition which reveals the following: Fianna Fáil as a cartel party can afford to neglect its infrastructure on the ground as long as it is controlling government resources. In opposition its leadership initiates reforms to reinvigorate the party's infrastructure since it is pressed to generate organisational support through other means than distributing benefits.